Vote for Ruby on Rails
If anyone wants Ruby on Rails support, plase do the following:

1) Log in to the Dreamhost Panel.
2) Go to Home > Suggestions
3) Search for Ruby.
4) Vote for 2005-01-31 | Install all Ruby libraries and Ruby on Rails (including FastCGI extension). | 5 credits

You may also want to vote for this one:

"Add support for the mod_ruby apache module."

Rumor has it that may be the most likely next step they can take. If you have any credits left, please give it a shot. This would be a lot better than regular cgi at least.

I second that motion. Ruby is one of the most awe-inspiring tools I've used in ages. What took me all of last weekend I achieved in about half an hour on Rails. Now I just need to find a cheap Ruby host for my charity site I'm developing! So hurry up Dreamhost!

We just upgraded our version of Ruby to the 1.8.2 version required for Ruby on Rails. We're going to look into installing the Rails software by default everywhere as well. To access Ruby 1.8.2, the binary is called 'ruby1.8'. Replace 'ruby' with that and you should be good to go.

I'll take a look at mod_ruby when I get a chance, but it's very unlikely we will offer it if it works anything like mod_perl. We use mod_perl ourselves and it's great, but it's just not appropriate for a shared hosting environment. We're quite happy to set it up for any dedicated server customers. The same may be the case for mod_ruby.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

Yay! You are THE MAN! Now....

If not mod_ruby, how about fastcgi? Or, better yet, how about supporting lighttpd? Some other providers are working in that direction:

http://forum.textdrive.com/viewforum.php?id=9
http://planetargon.com/rails_hosting/

It would be fantastic to get one of those types of setups here at DH. :)

This is wonderful! Please keep us up to date!

-Matt

We're looking into fastcgi right now. We'll probably have something running for internal testing purposes soon so we can see if it will work on all of our servers.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

Here's another vote in support of better rails support. I love DH hosting, but I have a rails project in the works and would hate to have to use another host for this reason. So far, I have not managed to get rails working even in a 'local' install in my account. If anyone _has_ done this, drop me a note. thx.

I got it running. It is painfully slow though. I thought it would be acceptable for development, but it isn't. It takes like 20 seconds or so for a request. It turns out that if you are using plain cgi the whole rails framework is re-loaded for each request.

Anyway, I did update the wiki (see below). My problem was that all my directories and the various dispatch.* files, weren't set to the correct permissions. They need to be chmod'd to 755:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Ruby_on_Rails#Troubleshooting

If that isn't it, drop me a line and I'll see if I can help.

I agree on liking DH and sure hope we get rails support soon! :)

PLEASE install fastcgi. I have four rails projects that im starting. and if its not here they will have to be hosted elsewhere. Im new hear but have been reccomended by a few people. Boy was i surprised when i installed my rails test app. 25 seconds for the initial page. Id be a guinea pig for testing if you need it. If not Ill have to move unfortunately

voted

Voted, and I second all of the comments being made here. Especially about the appreciation of quality DreamHosting and not wanting to move to another host for RoR access.

Just to keep the thread active... :) any progress? Need any testers?

Thanks!
Tom

Dallas thanks for installing 1.8.2! Do you have plans for making it the "default" ruby command (/usr/bin/ruby) instead of having to access it using "/usr/bin/ruby1.8"?

I ask because I do most of my development work on a local machine and then upload the tested code to the online machine and it would be really convenient to be able to have either this:
#!/usr/bin/ruby
or this:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
at the top of my scripts on both my development machine and on the dreamhost machine.

Thanks,

--gordon

Hello again... OK, please just forget about my previous post... I just realized that since my CGI's are run under my account, all I had to do was create a subdirectory under my account, create a link in there named "ruby" to the /usr/bin/ruby1.8 file, add the directory to the top of my PATH in the .bash_profile file, and then use this at top of my scripts:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

And that caused the 1.8.2 version of Ruby to be used...so life is good...

--gordy

Some progress has been made, but some other things came up and got in the way. If you would like to help test, send me a private message with the domain name you'd like to test with and we can work on getting it set up on your server.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

In reply to:

---

Some progress has been made, but some other things came up and got in the way. If you would like to help test, send me a private message with the domain name you'd like to test with and we can work on getting it set up on your server.

---

Hey, Dallas. Welcome back from your vacation. The revolt was crushed before it even got started.

---------------
Simon Jessey
Keystone Websites | si-blog

It's good to hear you got this working!

We are actually going through the process of updating the default 'ruby' to be the 1.8 version right now. We didn't do it right away in case there were any problems with the new 1.8 ruby binary but we have not heard of any so we'll go ahead and update the default version.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

Good to hear! I am back and I'm gradually re-integrating myself.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

Hi,

I'm a new satisfied DH customer. Great hosting, great support, great suggestions, great panel, great offering.
I live in Belgium and DH is the best Hosting service I found !

Sorry, off-topic but this is my first post, now I can say :

voted !

Can't wait ...

Bastien.